Mystery And Oodles Of Sex In Hollywood

Books

`You know what they say about Hollywood -- everybody out there lies, but it doesn`t matter because nobody ever listens anyway.``

``Hollywood is the only place in the world where you can die from encouragement.``

``This is a town where venom drips from the mouths of Hollywood wives who delight in picking (a) reputation clean like desert vultures polishing off the carcass of a dead cow.``

``What a zoo this town is.``

That`s the Motion Picture Capital as described in Personal Effects (Arbor House, $17.95), the first novel by critic and celebrity interviewer Rex Reed. Doesn`t sound like a nice place to live in, visit or even fly over. Then why our insatiable desire to hear, read and dream about it?

Ask me later. Today is Oscar Eve, the perfect time to savor the plight of a fictional screen goddess who`s profoundly depressed at the prospect of receiving the Life Achievement Award.

``I guess that`s the shovel they give you when they think you`ve got one foot in the grave already,`` grumbles Gilda Greenway, Reed`s central character.

A legendary star of the `40s, Gilda is sort of a cross between Ava Gardner and Rita Hayworth (Gilda -- get it?). A butchered abortion left her unable to bear children of her own, so Gilda became surrogate mother to four members of Hollywood`s younger generation: handsome actor King Godwin (``a bad boy, along with McQueen, Beatty and Brando``); King`s true love, beautiful actress Devon Barnes (a crusading Jane Fonda type, but without the show-business bloodline); King`s unloved wife, Inez Hollister Godwin (a drug-addicted witch, psychologically scarred by her incestuous father); and high-powered agent May Fischoff (fabulously successful, but overweight, insecure and love-starved). They`re known as Gilda`s ``Four Fans.``

Also around for the agony and the ecstasy are Avery Calder -- a flamboyant, homosexual, hypochondriacal, alcoholic writer who could be mistaken for Tennessee Williams -- and Billy Buck, ``the crown prince of show- biz journalism.`` Don`t assume that B.B. represents R.R., but rest assured that the two would get on famously. Like Reed, Buck is ``sassy,`` ``irreverent`` and notoriously ``bitchy.`` Also like Reed, Buck has ``a place in his heart, soft as a macaroon, for the good old days of Hollywood`s golden era.``

I`d cut right to the good part, if only I could ignore the murder-mystery aspect of Personal Effects. Unfortunately for her and the reader, the novel opens with Gilda`s funeral. They found the star in her living room on Christmas Eve, with a bullet hole in her chest and a picture of the ``Four Fans`` in her hand. Reed wants us to wonder, for more than 400 pages, which of the four could have done the deed.

The crown prince of plot Reed is not. Though he places all four fans-cum- suspects at the scene of the crime, he neglects to provide any of them with a plausible motive for murder. The puzzle is resolved by means of a contrivance that was ancient when the ``good old days`` were young.

Murder-mystery convention dictates that Reed tell his story primarily in flashbacks. The trick is to avoid anachronism, and the novice novelist hasn`t learned it yet. Johnny Carson`s name a household word? A lady in a ``seasick- green pantsuit``? Not in 1956. Felony Squad premiered in 1966, but King manages to appear on it about six years earlier.

The descriptive passages evince Reed`s extreme fascination with wardrobe and interior decoration. When he tries for a more hard-boiled style, he tends to lay eggs: ``The press was hungry, and this was front-page chow . . . Success was a piranha, nibbling at his nerves . . . Billy felt like a dead skunk was rotting in his gut . . .`` At times like these, Reed stops just short of parody. Perhaps he should have kept going.

The real fun comes when Personal Effects reads like a patented Rex Reed hatchet job, when the author sets storytelling aside to take wonderfully gratuitous shots at Barbra Streisand (``a banana split nightmare``), Sylvester Stallone (from ``the Nautilus school of acting``), Steven Spielberg`s ``masturbatory fantasies`` and this ``lethal industry`` in which ``everyone has the attention span of green-head flies.``

Movie maniacs may be able to enjoy the novel without caring who dispatched Gilda Greenway to that big soundstage in the sky. The film references are superabundant, and several merit inclusion in Trivial Pursuit`s Silver Screen edition. ``May was always as nervous as Victor Moore around her parents.`` For 10 points, how nervous is that? ``Every time I walk in this room it looks like Miriam Hopkins died in here.`` Darling, we know exactly what you mean.